Editor: Richard (Dick) Innes
Published by: ACTS International
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Vol. 16 – No. 4114 October 11, 2014
Thought for the week: "God promises a safe landing, not a calm passage." – Anonymous
"Without hard work, nothing grows but weeds." – Gordon B. Hinckley
"The grass is always greener where you water it." – Anonymous
"Truth isn't something you have—like a commodity. It is something you live. No one can honestly say, 'I have the truth,' and be a pain in the neck. You don't have it until you're living it." – Anonymous
"Truth is always strong no matter how weak it looks; and falsehood is always weak, no matter how strong it looks." – Phillips Brooks
"In prayer, God hears more than words. He listens to our heart." – Anonymous
"The task ahead of us is never as great as the Power behind." – Anonymous
Author and lecturer Leo Buscaglia once talked about a contest he was asked to judge. The purpose of the contest was to find the most caring child.
Teacher Debbie Moon's first graders were discussing a picture of a family. One little boy in the picture had a different hair color than the other members. One of her students suggested that he was adopted.
A little girl said, "I know all about Adoption, I was adopted."
"What does it mean to be adopted?" asked another child.
"It means," said the girl, "that you grew in your mommy's heart instead of her tummy!"
If we are true followers of Jesus Christ, we will be concerned about reaching the lost for Christ with His message of forgiveness and salvation. Jesus came to seek and to save lost souls, and He commissioned His followers to do likewise. If we are not doing likewise, we are not following Jesus.
As another has said, "Jesus last command to His followers needs to be our first priority." – Daily Encounter
On a poster on a wall at Wheaton College are
the following words:
The Living Truth is what I long to see,
I cannot live on what used to be,
So close your Bible and show me how,
The Christ you talk about is living now!
Based on an informal survey of six hundred people who had maintained successful marriages, Psychologist James Dobson arrived at "three tried and tested, back to basics recommendations" for reducing the chances of divorce and for maintaining marital stability:
• A Christ-centered home where the husband and wife are deeply committed to Jesus Christ;
• A committed love in which nothing short of death is permitted to come between the couple (in contrast to the idea that 'I'll stay with you as long as I feel love for you'); and
• A never-ending willingness to work at maintaining good communication.
People are not looking for perfect marriages, but for marriages that keep working. But even these less-than-perfect marriages have evaded many in the baby-boom generation. Marital instability has been taken for granted in this low-commitment era, and divorce has come to be seen as a reasonable way to get out of an unhappy marriage. As a result, the United States has the highest divorce rate in the world.
"Hope deferred makes the heart sick, but a longing fulfilled is a tree of life."1 – King Solomon
Norman Cousins was a doctor who treated leprosy and edited the 'Saturday Review' magazine in the early 1960's. After suffering a painful and prolonged illness, he became fascinated on ways in which to fight against the 'pain intensifiers' that he identified as negative emotions that increase the amount of pain a person feels.
"Cousins concluded that if negative emotions could produce chemical changes in the human body, then positive emotions such as hope, faith, love, joy, the will to live, creativity and playfulness could counteract the results of negative emotions and thereby reduce pain.
"Cousins began a research group at the UCLA medical school and studied the effects of positive emotions on health and pain. He surveyed 649 oncologists and asked them what psychological and emotional factors in their patients seemed important to them. Over 90 percent of those surveyed assigned the highest value to the attitudes of hope and optimism.
"Paul Brand writes about this research, 'One of the most important gifts we in the heath profession can offer our patients is hope, thereby inspiriting in the patient a deep conviction that inner strength can make a difference in the struggle against pain and suffering.'"
Interesting how God's Word, the Bible, taught the importance of hope in health and well-being three thousand years ago. Modern medicine came to this conclusion through research 50 or so years ago!
And what greater hope can anyone ever have that the Christian whose hope in in the Lord—no matter what happens. As David, the psalmist, wrote, "Be strong and take heart, all you who hope in the LORD."2
Suggested prayer: "Dear God, thank you that no matter what happens to me, my trust and my hope is in you. And I thank you for the healing power that this gives. Gratefully in Jesus' name. Amen."
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Because the world would die without,
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